Day 11: Flagstaff to Williams via Grand Canyon

Last night I went into downtown Flagstaff for dinner and a drink. It's a pretty cool place with plenty of restaurants and bars, and pretty lively. First I went to the Flagstaff brewery. I had a nice beer in there, but it was a bit quiet, so I ended up sitting at the bar in a neighbouring Irish bar. I got chatting to Bob, sitting next to me; and it turned out that he to was doing a bike tour around America; except he had quit his job and was taking 2 years out to do it. Nice! He was pretty knowledgeable about the places I had been to and where I was going, and recommended Rods Steak House when I got to Williams.

There's a big event at home today: Yes, it's Simon's birthday. I hear they had a street party in his honour. I hope you had a good one! There was also a wedding on I believe, so William and Kate, I hope it works out for you. Talking of Simon and birthdays, he had a t-shirt made especially for me for my birthday to wear on this trip. Unfortunately it was left at home, I'm such an idiot. Anyway Gillian thoughtfully sent me a photograph to post here. This way lots more people will get to see it:

...and the back,

Today is a day off Route 66, as I head north towards the Grand Canyon, but on the way is Sunset Crater, a volcano that erupted only about 1000 years ago. You can go up the volcanoo and see the crater if you have the time and are up for a long hike. I didn't, so I bought some postcards instead!

The snow capped San Francisco Moutains, from Sunset Crater National Park

A guy said to me today: "There are only two types of bike; those that have been dropped, and those that are going to be dropped". That was after he helped me pick my bike up. In my haste to hop off and take a few more pictures, I hadn't put the stand down properly and over she went! Luckily, as I was still astride her at the time, I was able to slow her descent to the ground although there was no way I could stop it altogether. After this kind sole helped me pick her up again I was relieved to see that there was no damage - not even a scratch.

The lava flow from the volcano, in the background.

After a good 30-odd mile ride around the Sunset crater National Park, it was time to head off to the Grand Canyon. Entering the park from the eastern end of the Southern Rim, the views were spectacular, and the was a 40 mile ride along the rim, with countless photo ops. Here's just a few that I took today:

The roads around here are great for motorcycling: well maintained smooth tarmac, which twists and turns, rises and falls, it's fantastic! The weather has been sunny and dry for the last few days, although pleasantly cool (in the 70s). In fact it's so dry that I had to buy some ChapStick as my lips were starting to dry out. I now have one more thing to add to my morning routine: put on lipstick, and re-apply regularly!

After a number of hours at the Canyon, it was getting on and time to head back south for Williams, and rejoin Route 66. The road to Williams is dead straight from the Canyon for about 50 miles, so a bit dull after the riding I'd done earlier.

Williams is a small two street cowboy town, and has a really nice feel. I didn't have a room booked, but soon checked into the Route 66 Inn, an old Mom & Pop Motor Lodge right in the middle of town. The room's big enough but could do with refurbishment as it's a bit tatty. Then again, for $39, I don't expect much. It has a bed and bathroom, has Wi-Fi and is clean, so that's good enough for me.

As I was sitting in my room, I heard some familiar voices passing by outside - yes it was Dale, Anthony, Daniel and some of the other Aussies! "We're going to Rods Steak House for dinner" they said, " Come with us". So I did. And then on to the Canyon bar which had Country karaoke going on. It got a bit messy, and I even took to the mic for a number. Hopefully, no one videoed it. What good company they are, we had a blast. Oh, and the steak was to die for - Bob, you were right!

Anthony and Daniel have a bonding session, having narrowly missed getting into a fight

Dale lets rip singing Peggy Sue!

As always, all the photos, and today's route are here:

Time for bed now, as there's the Route 66 Fun Run leaving here tomorrow, heading the same way as me - about 800 cars and bikes - and I want to get away before they do. Overtaking them would be a nightmare!

Today's Mileage: 196
Total Trip Mileage: 2289

Day 10: Gallup to Flagstaff

"... Life's a journey, not a destination, And I just can't tell what tomorrow brings ..."

I had my MP3 player on random during part of the ride today, and this song (Amazing by Aerosmith) came on. For some reason, this line jumped out at me, as it epitomises this trip, and the reasons for doing it. Anyway, enough of that.....

The Aussies were leaving early this morning for their long trip to the Grand Canyon. I went down to wave them off, and got myself ready and packed up the bike.

So, ten days into the rip I am now past the halfway mark, and I've got packing down to a fine art, and (touch wood) know where everything is. My clothes go in the left pannier. The hardware; camera bag, chargers and leads, reference books and maps, all go in the right. The stuff that I'm likely to need for the day ahead, plus my laptop is in the tourpack on the back. Even my jacket pockets are worked out: lower right - wallet, safely zipped in.; lower left - bike keys, also zipped up; top right - the iGotU GPS tracker; and upper left, any other small items that I might need (ear plugs, pen, etc). This might sound like I've got a touch of OCD (maybe I have), but it means that everything is to hand, and there's no panics because I can't find my wallet, or whatever.

My first port of call today was to Wal-Mart - I desperately needed some new socks! These procured I set off, heading out of New Mexico, and into Arizona; state number 7 of my trip.

A last view of New Mexico as I left

I didn't know at the time, but I had gained another hour. Arizona's in the Moutain Time Zone, but they don't use daylight saving, so in winter they are the same time as the other states in that time zone, but in summer they are at the same time as California.

My plan today was to visit the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest. The desert is very spectacular, and once again I was faced with numerous photo opportunities, most of which I took! It's very difficult to capture something of this scale in a photo, though. Here's a few that I took today:

In these parts, much of old Route 66 has been replaced by the Interstate, and so no longer exists. In this picture you can see trucks on the new Interstate in the background, but the line of telegraph poles marks the path of the original Route 66 roadway:

The petrified forest left me a bit cold, I've got to admit. I kind of imagined a forest of trees that had been turned to stone. What it is though is a load of logs strewn about that have been transformed into rock over many millions of years:

OK maybe I was expecting too much!

A wrong turn out of the Petrified Forest State park cost me about 40 miles of riding until I got back to where I should have been, but the roads were good and the scenery breathtaking, so it was no big deal.

Next stop on the journey today was the Jack Rabbit Trading Company. This has been a major stopping point on the Route for many years. Plenty have wondered how, when the Interstate was built, this little shop got its own entry/exit ramps: there really is nothing else around. It turns out that at that time it had just been bought by a retiring Senator - maybe he pulled a few strings?

Signs all along the way had been advertising the Jack Rabbit store, and now I had reached it!

A little detour took me through Winslow Arizona, as made famous by a lyric in an Eagles song (Take it Easy?) - "... standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona ....". There is a sign on that supposed corner, and many people have had their photo taken there. I'm not one of them though, not being a big Eagles fan.

Finally, before reaching Flagstaff I took a little detour through Winona (Don't forget Winona!), and then into Flagstaff from the north.

Wow, three song references in one blog post!
Tonight I shall check out Historic Downtown Flagstaff, as theres a brewery that's been recommended to me.
Tomorrow I'm going to look at a rather large hole in the ground.

Here's today's route and all of the photos from the day:



Today's Mileage: 260
Total Trip Mileage:2094

Weekly Countdown: 7 Plotting the route

Another week passes and the excitement is beginning to mount, things are coming together, and it's getting closer now.

The eBay items all sold, and in all I made over £200! Quite a result I think, and so I'll start to have a look for more items to sell. However, unless I get a largish windfall in the next 7 weeks (the lottery tickets have been bought!), I think that I'll have to resign myself to not having quite enough, and letting the plastic take the strain.

As I mentioned in my last post, the new maps for the GPS arrived, and so this week I've spent some time inputting Points of Interest (PoIs), and playing around with routes. At the moment, my itinerary is looking like this:


Week 1:
18April, Monday: Arrive in Chicago
19April, Tuesday: Pick up bike & ride to Bloomington, IL
20April, Wednesday: Ride to St. Louis, MO
21April, Thursday: On to Springfield, MO
22April,  Friday: Overnight in Tulsa, OK
23April, Saturday: Ride to Clinton, OK
24April, Sunday: Ride to Amarillo, TX

Week 2:
25April, Monday: Ride to Santa Fe, NM
26April, Tuesday: Rest day in Santa Fe
27April, Wednesday: Ride to Holbrook, AZ

28April, Thursday: Sidetrip to Grand Canyon, AZ
29April, Friday: Ride to Needles, CA (Happy Birthday Simon, and happy wedding to William and Kate)
30April, Saturday: Laughlin River Run
01May, Sunday: Side trip to Las Vegas, NV

Week 3:
02May, Monday: Rest day in Las Vegas.
03May, Tuesday: Back onto Route 66 and ride to Victorville, CA
04May,  Wednesday: The last stage of my Rt66 adventure to Santa Monica - I've done it! Probably overnight up the coast somewhere (Santa Barbara?).
05May, Thursday: Continue up the PCH to Monterey, CA
06May, Friday: The last full day - make it to San Fransisco
07May, Saturday: Return Bike & Fly Home
08May, Sunday: Arrive back home
I'm sure it'll be fine tuned and tweaked, right up until my departure, and probably during the trip too. For example, my gut feeling is that the second half, from Texas onwards, will be the more interesting part, so I'm looking at whether I should speed up the first part so I can spend more time on the second.

Of course, the trip is not just about riding across America, it's about experiencing the places and meeting the people, so if I find somewhere that's really nice I will spend a bit of time there. Equally if there's not much of interest around I can zip onto the Interstate for a bit.

This week I'm going to continue with the GPS side of things, and, most importantly, decide on my travel arrangements to and from the US.

Days to departure: 49
Paydays to departure: Payday today, so I suppose just 1 left.
Funding: $$$Covered by my credit limit$$$

A Harley in Summer

Re-reading my last post about renting an Electraglide reminded me that we (SWMBO & I) have rented one before.

It was a few years ago in the middle of August when we were visiting Las Vegas. We rented the Electraglide for a couple of days during a trip there, from EagleRider I think? Whatever.

Now, when riding in the UK, even on the hottest day there has ever been, you know that once you get moving, with a bit of a breeze in the face, you will be comfortably cool. That's not the case in Vegas in August.

We turned up to pick the bike up, and being ATGATT (all the gear all the time) type riders, we asked about borrowing leather jackets. Well the guy at the rental place looked at us like we were from another planet (which in a sense we were, I guess), and pointed to the rack of gear, which was so full it was clear none of his other punters that day had availed themselves of that service. He muttered something about it being far too hot for jackets, but, if we wanted.......

He was right of course. Even the obligatory crash helmets proved to be almost too much, and soon after we set off we were in t-shirts & jeans, with nothing more than sun-screen for protection. Not much good for gravel rash, I wouldn't think - thankfully we never had to find out.

So we picked up the bike, along with another guy who was from NYC, and asked about a good route that we could take. The guy in the shop advised use to travel out of Vegas, and head for the Hoover Dam, over that into Arizona, and carry on until we got to mile marker 14. "Once there, look for a small road on your right", he said. "That will take you down to the [Colorado] river. When you get there, take off you helmets, watches and shoes and jump right in."

The 3 of us set off, went over the dam, and sure enough, found this small twisty road at mile marker 14 that took us down to the river. It is technically a river at that point, but it is so wide it looks more like a lake! And we did just as he said (except I left my trainers on - you never know what's on a river bed to stick in your foot!). It was bliss. We cooled of in that river, must have been for 30 minutes, and didn't want to get out.

Eventually we decided it was time to get out, and we got back on the bike dripping wet, and set off back the way we had come. I can say, with no word of a lie, that by the time we reached the Hoover Dam again, 14 miles later, we were bone dry, it was that hot. Going over the dam, the traffic was slow, it was the middle of the day, and so, so hot. SWMBO was starting to overheat, I was scared that she was getting heat stroke (I've never seen a redder face!), so we stopped at a place called Boulder City, where the guy from NYC bought her a root beer (yuk!), and then carried on his own way. Instead we found a nice air-conditioned cafe and had a couple cold, cold Buds, before heading back to Vegas.

We went back out on the bike later that evening and cruised up and down the Strip, and went to the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino and posed there for a bit. But I had learnt my lesson - August is not the time to be riding through the desert on a bike - which is why I'm going in May!

So, here it is....

..... the route. I've done a bit of research and stuff on t'internet and found a few places that suggest routes. WikiTravel has a good one that takes about 9 days. This is a bit too quick for me, as it averages about 300 miles a day. Eventually I've settled on the route below that is based on an itinerary from a company called Riding Route 66. It takes about 14 days, and includes side trips to The Grand Canyon and Las Vegas, where I might spend a couple of days, meaning this part of the trip could actually take me 16 days. So here it is in more detail:

Day 1: Pick up bike in Chicago, fairly short ride to Springfield IL.
Day 2: Springfield, IL to St Louis, MI
Day 3: St Louis, MI to Springfield, Missouri
Day 4: Then on to Tulsa, Oklahoma (202 miles), cutting the corner of Kansas for about 20 miles
Day 5: Tulsa, OK to Clinton, OK (217miles)
Day 6: Is this the way to Amarillo? I sure hope so, as that's tonight's stop
Day 7: Amarillo TX to Las Vegas New Mexico, passing through the half way point on this route
Day 8: Las Vegas, NM to Grants, NM/AZ, about 239 miles
Day 9: Grants to Holbrook, AZ
Day 10: Then a side trip up to the Grand Canyon
Day 11: Back on track, and stop for the night in Needles
Day 12: A short ride for the 2nd side trip up to Las Vegas, Nevada
Day 13 (& maybe 14): Stay in Vegas and clean up on the poker tables
Day 15: Back onto Route 66 to Bartsow, CA
Day 16: Arrive at the end of Route 66 at Santa Monica Pier
Day 17 - 21: meander up to San Fransisco and give the bike back :-(

 Of course, this is the first cut. I might find something interesting on the way and spend longer in one place, and then make up time elsewhere. I'm not planning to book any accomodation more that a day or 2 in advance, so there will not be a strict schedule that I have to keep to.

Getting exciting now!! Can I go this year instead?